WHAT EXACTLY DOES IT MEAN ‘TO HAVE A STANDARD’?

A standard is a baseline, a value about something that you just don’t go below. You can have a standard about how tidy you keep you’r room, how respectfully you treat other people and say how you want to be treated by others, how much TV you watch or how much time you spend on social media, etc. A standard is something you are already living, it’s something you do and not something you would like to do or wish to do, but what’s already happening. Standards are something we can also change from having a low standard to a higher one.

Your standards are about you and the quality you live in. They are nothing you have to impose onto others or convince others to have the same. You just live it and express it. It is your movement and it is your space you move in. A standard is actually a beautiful space you feel held in and it supports you to stay connected to yourself.

If you live and express your standards (the values that make you feel connected to yourself) you feel more confident within yourself and who you are without needing to be anything for anyone else.

When we don’t honour our standards and compromise it’s like a disturbance within the body, like you have given something very precious away. This may make you feel empty and then you try to fill yourself with other things that don’t feel great to avoid feeling the feeling of emptiness! Abandoning our standards make us crave recognition on the outside, because we have left the connection with ourself and instead look outside of ourselves for confirmation of who we are. You may even start to criticize others or put your own standards down as not important to make yourself feel better or fit in, like saying something doesn’t matter to you when it really does!

For example, you really like keeping your room tidy, but all your friends’ rooms are a mess and so when they come over you let your room get messy, because you don’t want to stand out. Or you really like to eat certain foods that make you feel light and clear, but all your friends like eating junk food, so when they come over you provide them with the food they supposedly like instead of sticking to your standards, because you just want to fit in. So, not only do you compromise your own standard, you also rob them of getting a different reflection and an opportunity to see or taste something different, no matter if they may like it or not.

We live in a society that currently has very low standards, which means that we have the door open to behaviours that are not truly supporting us. Starting with not taking care of ourselves to finding it normal to post nude selfies or sexting with virtual strangers are all behaviours based on standards that don’t honour our bodies and support us to express, decency, respect and overall love to ourselves and to others.

So we can’t blame technology and the influence social media has for this as we are the ones that are setting the standards. Okay so we might not have had a lot of role models genuinely reflecting to us and living standards of care, love, decency and respect but that doesn’t mean that we can’t change this ourselves! So, what happens when we live a standard that hold these values high in a world where everybody else is constantly asked to drop their standards?

We feel the pressure of the outside world on our inner world and the tension of having different standards can feel so disharmonious that you just want it to go away (duh!). Thoughts come in of ‘I am not liked as much if I am ‘different’’ or ‘I have to be like the others and not stand out’ and so we lower/ drop the standard to avoid the disturbance. The tension makes us follow what others are doing instead of what feels true to us and we start to believe that the lower standard is what is ‘normal’.

We leave our own standards to be ‘normal’, to fit in, to be liked and to be like everybody else ending up with a measured version of ourselves, seeking recognition and acceptance on the outside because we have thrown our inner compass overboard! If we all constantly throw our standards overboard, we end up with the world as we have today and who is giving us the reflection that our true contentment comes from the inside (within) and not from the outside (that is given to us)?

Are you willing to be the trendsetter of high standards? Having values that cherish yourself and others or do you prefer popularity by swimming in the same muddy pond others are in feeling empty on the inside?

If we hold our standards very dear to ourselves and who we are on the inside, no matter what is happening on the outside other people can see, hear, experience, read, feel, smell, taste, and touch what you have as a standard, so they have the opportunity to feel a new platform for themselves. This is how we change things in the world by setting our own standards and holding them very high and dear to ourselves.

Your grandness is reflected by your standards and values and not by the likes of a selfie taken by the lower standards of an outside world that is designed to trash you.